Korea as McDonald's
The South Korean government plans to franchise national restaurants internationally to create more jobs and to export Korean food products. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs announced last Monday that it seeks to foster Korean restaurants to grow to be as popular as U.S.-based global fast food chain McDonald's, which has more than 30,000 locations all over the world.
The improvement plan involves following five strategies: legal support, information furnishing, human resources development, publicity campaign development, and infrastructure building. The move aims at supporting the rapidly-growing national restaurant industry and globalizing its traditional food.
According to the Ministry, there are currently 3,726 Korean restaurants in some 40 countries, which is 4 times more than in 2010. Until now, about 120 Korean brands have expanded their chains abroad, including instant bakery franchise Delice (600 overseas chains), frozen yogurt and smoothie brand Red Mango Inc. (572), fried-chicken franchise Genesis BBQ (351), fast food restaurant Lotteria, and a bakery company of the SPC Group (172). The plan seeks to boost the number of Korean restaurants to over 7,000 in 50 nations by 2020, said the Ministry.
To this end, the government has identified major tasks to expand legal and financial support in local markets. The Ministry indicated that it would build Intellectual Property desks in China, the U.S., Vietnam, and Thailand to aid local Korean restaurants financially for up to 70 percent of the necessary costs of trademark applications or design registration. The Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corp. plans to organize an advisory group of legal and financial experts to offer on-site expertise appropriate for the local market.
The government proposed a new manpower training system to make the plan feasible. The education program will call for enrolled students and graduates in China, Southeast Asian countries, and Middle Eastern countries who are interested in restaurant management. They will learn how to produce halal-certified food and to make inroads to open restaurant chains adjusting to the culture and trend of the target area.
The ministry also said that it will revise the related laws for foreign trainees to receive medical examination certificates when they have a valid passport. Until the recent date, foreign cooks and other employees working in the foreign locations of Korean restaurant chains have not been able to get any job training in South Korea. Such training programs required medical examination certificates, which are issued only to those with permanent residence in South Korea.
More importantly, the government plans to fashion so-called “Seoul Street,” modeling “Tokyo Street,” which is a gathering of Japanese restaurants near large foreign shopping malls to raise national brand awareness in foreign lands. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy suggested a new service of the local trade building in foreign countries, called “Service Mundus,” that will conduct overseas market research and support business trips.
“The plan is focused on increasing the number of Korean restaurants in other countries while also expanding the number of countries with Korean restaurants. We expect that this project will in turn help boost overseas shipments of our traditional food and ingredients,” an official for the ministry said in a press release.